


Home is Where You're Happy

by dollylux



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Cults, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Love at First Sight, M/M, Religious Fanaticism, Soulmates, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-30 00:23:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13938630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: Prompt:Cult leader Jared + journalist Jensen passing through his town.





	Home is Where You're Happy

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Charles Manson song, off the album _Lie: The Love and Terror Cult._

That these places are always outside city limits is no coincidence.

It’s indicative, if anything. Symbolic. These people feel, or are made to feel, they may argue, on the fringes of society. Neglected, at best; ostracized, at worst. Everybody’s got a story.

Jensen deals exclusively in stories.

The finesse, and what Jensen excels at, is extracting the truth from any story he’s been given. And it may take weeks or even months of research, of full submersion, but he always finds it. The truth, that is. It always rises to the top. It wants to be found.

He’d refused an assistant and a photographer outright. Morgan had been furious at him, called him reckless, but sharing this experience with any other nonbeliever may alter his perception. Color his view of his new world. He wants to walk in like all the others did.

Lost, but found.

The drive that leads up to the compound is mostly dirt with stray bits of packed in gravel, still dusty like it had been driven recently with clear tire tracks demarcating the path. He adjusts his glasses and squints up into the Texas summer sun, the one that makes days like this seem to last forever. He hefts his stuffed duffel higher on his shoulder and starts toward Gathered Light.

\--

It’s like walking into a new town in the Wild West, dozens of eyes peeking from behind rails and doors to spy on him as he makes his way to the main building, the place where he’s been told Jay Triste spends most of his daylight hours. The children giggle and talk loudly to their parents, unlearned in social graces like any other kids, so their questions about who Jensen is and if he has candy follow him up the steps and to the large black door.

The camera dangling around his neck has a fresh roll of film in it, the lens cap off, ready to go. He wipes the sweat from his forehead and knocks twice, the thickness of the door absorbing most of the sound. It opens at once, revealing a boy two or three years into adolescence, his eyes big and brown and curious. He steps back and bows his head, his body angled not toward Jensen but to the center of the room, the place where all the light in this vast, echoing space collects. The door shuts behind him, and he knows without even looking around that there are now only two of them here.

“Hello,” the man at the heart of the light says, his voice low and warm, face hidden by a thick fall of brown hair. He’s seated on a thick woven blanket made of nothing but white material, his pants the same blinding color but made of a light, flowing linen, his black tanktop clinging and ribbed. His feet are bare and long-toed, the soles of them filthy with dirt and dust.

“Hey,” Jensen replies, tugging on his bag fitfully as he tries to absorb all the cool air blasting from the vents overhead. The whole room is painted white with floor to ceiling windows, the only darkness coming in the form of the wood flooring. The man who he assumes is Jay Triste finally looks up at him, his large hands pressed together in front of him like he’s praying. Jensen feels a sudden and intense need to kneel.

“You must be Jensen. From _The Dallas Morning News_. I’m Jay. Please. Won’t you have a seat?” The guy’s tan, serious face breaks into a smile, his teeth matching the walls matching his pants matching his soul. Probably. Jensen itches for the notepad tucked away in his bag. He sits across from the guy instead of reaching down to try for an awkward handshake, and after a few tries in other positions, he tucks himself into a graceless crosslegged heap, his jeans pulling tight across his thighs, oxfords squeaking over the floor.

Jay watches every move with a smile so small and unreadable, Jensen thinks maybe it’s a trick of the light.

“Thank you for agreeing to this,” Jensen says, breaking through the silence that feels loaded, heavy in this bright room. “I’ve been following the movements of… of your group for awhile. You’ve grown quite a bit in the last year, haven’t you?”

Jay tucks his hands into his lap and stares straight on at Jensen, studying him with what feels like charmed patience, the smile unquestionable now, drawing up dimples.

“We can’t start like this. It’s vulgar, don’t you think?” He turns to the tray beside him of a sweaty glass pitcher of ice water and two mismatched glasses. He fills them both and passes one to Jensen, nodding for him to drink up. Jensen does, gratefully. Accepts a second glass before he tries to speak.

“Well, I don’t…” Jensen licks his lips, tasting sweat and cold. The heat on his cheeks isn’t from his walk from the cab to the front door. “What did you have in mind, then?”

Jay sips at his own water, swallowing it like it’s aged wine, like he’s savoring every drop. It makes Jensen glance down at his own glass and wonder what exactly’s in it.

“I have you for a week, don’t I?”

Jensen looks up at that and catches Jay’s eyes staring straight into his own, so piercing and _seeing_ that Jensen feels penetrated. His heart thumps in his throat, and he tries to swallow around it.

 _Strange wording_ , is what he wants to say. Instead, he nods.

“Then we don’t need to start in the middle of the story. We’ve got plenty of time.” Jay sets his glass down on the tray and stands up, leaning down to offer Jensen one of his wide, long hands. “Won’t you come with me?”

Jensen finishes off his second glass of water in two gulps and returns it to the tray, hesitating for a couple of beats before he reaches out to take Jay’s hand. It’s warm and impossibly strong, and when he’s lifted up off his feet and standing in front of the man, short enough in comparison that he has to look up to meet his gaze, he feels a strange euphoria melting through him, pulling him in. He doesn’t want to let go of Jay’s hand.

“You don’t have to,” Jay says to the quiet. He gives Jensen’s hand a slow squeeze, thumb sliding over the bumps of his knuckles. “Come. Let me show you my home.”

Jensen sheds his bag and his camera, leaving them behind in the White Room without a second glance. His mind is shouting at him to be cautious, to remain objective, to refuse manipulation, but the rest of him feels relaxed, the tension leaving his body in a flood. 

The sun doesn’t feel oppressive when he steps outside again. It feels healing, comforting, like he’s being looked after by something that will never leave him, never let him down.

“What was in the water?” he asks. 

Jay’s laugh is so genuine and so joyous that Jensen can’t help but smile. 

“Life,” Jay replies. Another squeeze to Jensen’s hand sends away any residual worries. He finds himself pulled in to Jay’s long, firm body, finds himself tucked up beneath his arm and cradled close, so close that he can smell his sweat and the slow bake of sunshine in his clothes, in his hair. He wraps an arm around his waist and closes his eyes, not worrying where they’re going, that they’re drifting down a dirt trail into the woods and away from the quiet gathering of followers left behind them. 

He feels so utterly changed from only ten minutes ago that he wonders if this is a dream, if everything before Jay was a dream, if he’s been frozen in some important way until he could get here, back to where he belongs.

His other arm finds its way around Jay’s slim waist to its mate, and he savors the sound of Jay’s heart against his ear, the sound of him breathing.

This isn’t an introduction. This is a reunion.

“Welcome home,” Jay whispers against his hair just as they slip into the shade of the trees and disappear.

\--

Jay has eleven wives, not all of them female. Jensen, freshly fucked and filled with Jay’s Light, gets to sit at his side, quiet as a queen, and watch them find out they are no longer married.

The youngest bride, a sweet eleven year old boy with brown curls that touch his dark shoulders, doesn’t bother to hide his tears as he serves Jensen yet another glass of cold water and cut up cheese and apples, his eyes down but his jaw set.

Jensen crunches into a piece of apple and listens to Jay talk, addressing the large crowd of his followers, not hearing exactly what’s being said because he’s elsewhere, in some sacred and safe space that he and Jay have created together, that exists only between them. He hears his name over and over but he doesn’t tune in. His bag and his camera have disappeared, and he realizes dimly that he doesn’t care where any of it went.

He’s no longer here to observe the Light. He’s here to bathe in it.

\--

Every Lightbringer, all three hundred and ninety-six of them, watch Jensen spread his legs for the first time as a bride. Jay’s cock is enormous, but it’s dripping with oil and hard enough to be a weapon and all Jensen’s. He accepts him between his thighs and into his body with a shivering sigh that echoes in the White Room, and the quiet drone of constant prayer from the followers doesn’t disturb the sounds of their lovemaking, doesn’t hide a second of the ceremony.

When Jay comes inside of him, Jensen stares straight up into his eyes and strains his hips up against him, his thighs visibly shaking as he accepts and accepts and accepts it.

The warmth spreads all through him, stretching out even to the tips of his fingers and of his sun-bleached, growing hair. His glasses were lost in the woods that first day, all that time ago, and he hasn’t bothered to look for them.

The only thing he needs to see is constantly at his side, or on top of him.

“My Lord,” he sighs as he milks Jay with the steady pulse of his insides. Those eyes are one thousand colors that become endless in candlelight, and the flicker of the hundreds of them filling the room dance in his gaze and sparkle in the tears that build and fall onto Jensen’s upturned face.

“My love,” Jay says back, one hand grasped in a fist at the back of Jensen’s soft hair, pulling his head back so he can’t look away.

He never will. Not ever.

\--

Eight months and nineteen days after Jensen Ackles walked up the long drive to the compound, Jeff Morgan follows suit.

If the Denton County police won’t come out here to look for his missing employee, Jeff’ll do it himself, by God.

There’s an even bigger audience for Jeff, and he has to find his own way to the massive round building right in the middle of the strange town. He stands up tall and waits for someone to answer his booming knocks on its door.

He knew Jensen should’ve brought somebody with him. That boy was a little too eager to get up here, to run with this bizarre story of some do-gooder religious freaks. 

And from what Jeff’s gathered, these clowns don’t even believe in God or nothin’. Just some Jesus lookalike centerfold who says all the right things.

“Yes?” comes a voice from a tiny crack in the door. There’s movement beyond, in the room, but no one speaks. A spring breeze kicks up behind him, rustling leaves and waking up the birds so that their chittering songs are almost deafening. Jeff shifts from one foot to the other. Glares at the tiny doorman.

“I’m here to see Jensen.” Jeff was in Korea. No little pissant’s gonna scare him off. “Tell him it’s Jeff.”

“The Light Holder doesn’t welcome guests,” the boy says, not opening the door a budge more, his voice cold and formal. Rehearsed.

“I’m not _lookin’_ for your damn Master or Chancellor or whatever the hell you call him. I wanna see Jensen Ross Ackles, reporter for the--”

The door opens fully, and Jeff has to look up to see who fills the space now. 

This is Jay, no doubt, his hair long and loose around his shoulders, chest hair visible above a loose-fitting white tunic. He’s got a full beard and a mouth that’s pulled into a deep frown, his eyes dark, glittering with light and almost tangible anger.

“He does not wish to see you,” Jay says simply. He’s searching Jeff’s face like he Knows, like he can see straight into him and he’s found the secrets; Jeff’s burning, frenetic affair with Jensen, the forbidden fucks in supply closets and by the hour rooms across Dallas. Jeff tucks his hands into his pockets to hide his wedding band. Swallows hard.

“Tell him it’s Jeff. He knows me. We have a history.” He searches Jay’s eyes and finds no change there, not a single flinch in his expression.

“You said it all, right there.” Jensen’s voice, more melodic than Jeff remembers it, and he’s suddenly right there beside this giant of a man, his arms wrapped around the guy’s skinny waist, cheek tucked against his chest like he’s a little kid. The muscles in his face are utterly changed, different ones in use than when Jeff knew him, maybe. Whatever it is, it makes him almost unrecognizable.

He looks like a child. Even his eyes are bigger, rounder.

“...What?” Jeff manages.

“History. We have a history. That means it’s over. History is in the past.”

Jay’s hand cups possessively around Jensen’s hip, and Jeff’s jaw tenses as it squeezes there before sliding back to his ass.

“You can’t just disappear, Jen! There are flyers hanging all over town with your picture up. You’ve been on the news. Your parents are--”

“You know where I am,” Jensen cuts in calmly, rubbing Jared’s long chest with a slow hand. A band of gold glints on his ring finger, catching in the sun shining in from behind Jeff. “And as you can see, I’m perfectly alright. Go back to Dallas. Tell whoever you want. Just leave us alone.”

Jeff’s speechless for a moment, maybe for the first time in his life. He glances up at Jay and finds him gazing on impassively, like Jeff’s a fly buzzing around the room. A temporary annoyance.

“You should at least--”

“Goodbye,” Jensen says. The door closes with heavy finality, holding in all the sound that may be coming from within. The walk back through the silent, watchful town is a blur, and the journey back into Pilot Point to call a cab passes with dreamlike slowness.

 

The next time Jeff sees Jensen, it’s on the news. He’s shocked that it’s even being televised, that many dead bodies, but Jensen’s stands out from the hundreds of others. He always has.

He’s dressed all in white, just like Jay Triste had been when Jeff saw him last. The years had been incredibly kind to the boy because he still looks like just that; like a childbride to the man at his side. His hair is long, grazing his freckled cheeks, the color a molten honey that glints in the sun.

Death gives Jensen a paleness he never had in life, and his face has changed yet again as all the muscles in it relax, settle into their final movement. He’s wrapped completely around Jay Triste, arms and legs, his face nearly obscured in Jay’s neck, in the nested darkness of his own hair. Their hands are clasped on Jay’s unmoving chest, and a peace Jeff can’t even comprehend edges out any other emotions that may have been with them in those last moments. 

They are, in an image that will grace the covers of countless magazines and haunt Jeff for the rest of his life, smiling.


End file.
